Because, without airblast, only doing W+M1 is one of the deadliest things a non-pro Pyro can do. They might be able to make themselves a fraction more dangerous with Flare Gun or Axtinguisher, but it's easy and effective just to W+M1.

Extinguishing allies and clearing stickytraps puts you pretty high in Pyro ranking, but you're still far from those who reflect projectiles without quickly dying.

Any Pyro who is not in that top 2-4% is probably going to die if they try improve more by reflecting projectiles with airblast, because airblast is simply not noob friendly due to the lack of falloff.

So, here's how falloff could work.

Airblast buffed to 130% of current range. To simplfy some stuff, I'm dividing airblast into 13 segments of distance, with 1 as furthest segment and 13 as closest to flamethrower.

At furthest 3 segments, airblast causes projectles to deactivate and fall to the ground, which is really the whole point of this thread since it makes non-pros less likely to die when they fail.

Airblast strength on players climbs in a linear fashion, starting from 30% strength at 1st segment, and stopping at 150% strength at 8th segment.

Segment 4 has -30% projectile speed and damage, climbing in a linear fashion until +40% speed and damage at segment 11.

There. Now airblast has gone from something that you are good at or you aren't to varying degrees of percievable skill, with the nubs able to protect themselves and TF2 gods timing reflects perfectly so as to fling some nukes.

Mid Tier pyros are generally catagorized by their loadout choices, reflecting skills and flamethrower aim, as well as their reflect skills and habits.

A low level pyro would be using any flamethrower but gravitates toward backburner, doesn't understand the meta, can reflect semi-reliably at long range and doesn't understand the mechanics behind the flamethrower.

A mid level pyro uses any flamethrower, but gravitates towards the Degreaser/axtinguisher combo, understands very basic meta, can reflect semi-reliably at mid range and can lead targets to a basic level.

A high level pyro uses any flamethrower, but gravitates toward either stock, Gas Jockey, and sometimes Backburner, knows the metagame to a decent level, understands leading and det jumping, can perform prediction reflects at cqc, and reflects at mid very reliably.

Mid Tier pyros are generally catagorized by their loadout choices, reflecting skills and flamethrower aim, as well as their reflect skills and habits.

My loadout consists of stock flamethrower, stock shotgun & Neon Annihilator -or- the back scratcher.I can reliably reflect rockets (4 in 5 approx) at about a third of the length of the sewer pipes in 2fort.I frequently spycheck at random and on teammates and extinguish legitimate teammates.

In other words, they try to airblast a few rockets and half of the rockets hit them.Exactly the point of this thread.

There's a point to this thread? All I can see in it is some sort of suggestion to buff pyro's airblast, which would be a bad move anyway since it's all part of learning how to play the game. [/quote]More people would learn if it came with more immediate reward though.